Command history substitution

Use the fc built-in command to list or edit portions of the history file. To select a portion of the file to edit or list, specify the number or the first character or characters of the command.

You can specify a single command or range of commands.

If you do not specify an editor program as an argument to the fc regular built-in command, the editor specified by the FCEDIT variable is used. If the FCEDIT variable is not defined, then the /usr/bin/ed file is used. The edited command or commands are printed and run when you exit the editor.

The editor name hyphen (-) is used to skip the editing phase and run the command again. In this case, a substitution parameter of the form Old=New can be used to modify the command before it is run. For example, if r is aliased to fc -e -, then typing r bad=good c runs the most recent command that starts with the letter c and replaces the first occurrence of the bad string with the good string.